Youth

So generally with my youngsters, I don't take them out of the Under 18 side until they get forced into the reserves at 18/19, that includes sending them on loan. At that point I send them to my affiliate when I can (usually Crewe as they have a decent set up) and some of them to whoever offers. They come back and are now 19/20...here's where my question lies. Should I send them on loan again or have them be on the fringes, play in cup games etc?

Short answer, if they're not going to play at least 10 (maybe half as sub) league games I'd send them out again

I tend to send my youths out as early as possible usually 17 (as long as they're already trained by club, sending some bought youngsters out too early could stop them getting trained by club status which is handy for Europe). I keep doing this until a) they become good enough for my first team, b) I judge that they'll never be good enough and sell.

I'll try that, thanks

As a contrary position, I don't find myself using loans as a primary development tool. If a youngster is good enough, I prefer to keep him around, playing reserves and being slotted in to senior games when it makes sense (hopefully you get a bunch of cup games with weak opponents, and then you can try them in one or two tougher matches). And maybe they never go on loan if it goes well. Or go on loan when they're already well evolved but there isn't quite a spot they deserve this year. Others, if that route doesn't look to be happening, I'll let go out. But I'm often looking at those as "you're probably not going to make the senior side, this is your chance to step up and prove me wrong". It seems it's harder to arrange the loan you want in FM than in real life. I don't want the loan if the player isn't going to get consistent first-team action. Sure, it happens that they go into a situation where they should do, and then don't play well enough to get the time, but often I find the offers are either "feels ... will provide cover for the first team" or the offering team isn't at the right level - say in England, staff feel the player is good enough for championship but offer comes from L1 side. If I could always arrange the loan I want, my position might be different; but when I can't arrange what I want, I'd rather have them training with my hand-picked, and always brilliant staff and playing reserves than some staff I don't know about that may have crappy training abilities. I'll typically schedule a ton of friendlies through the season for the reserves so they're getting a lot of games.

That's a bomb approach. Do you find that the players who are 3-4 star potential play better than the 4.5 guys at youth? Because that seems to be happening to my regens which is why I asked my question. For an example on my current save, I'm in 2015 and have a 3 star potential kid who was 17 had 30 something goals in my youth team, 20 something at Crewe the next year and now idk how to let him develop. There's two or three other strikers with higher potential who don't perform like that. I like the friendlies though, that's a sweet idea I'm gonna take for both my u18 and reserves